If by rule it means like a king rules over a kingdom, then I don’t think there is anything absolute about it. A king can’t stop all evil or bad things from happening within his kingdom, but he can be steadfast and try his hardest to stop as much as possible, and set a good example.
In this sense, I see the verse talking about addressing deeper psychological issues, such as addictions that lead you to sin. It’s about looking inward and finding bad habits that lead you to commit sin. Will there be a few slips here and there? Sure. However, I think the verse is more about creating a solid psychological foundation.
As a student of the medieval Franciscan philosopher Duns Scotus I came across some of his arguments about our freedom of will. As the beings that we are we most naturally follow the inclination of our desires and what we believe is good for us. There are many good things in the world that we need and may seek to have. So we have desire for them and it is called “the will to goods”. Of course that aspect of will and our affections can become depraved and highly selfish and disruptive to relationships. But says Scotus we have also been given by God a second capacity for a higher “will to divine justice”. We can to chose to go against self -willed desires to some higher good towards God and our neighbours and in if we dod not have this capacity as a divine gift in us we could never be converted to the way of Christ. The ideal way of life of the Christian is to hold together the goodness that may still be found the “will to goods” and the higher will to divine justice.
There are some considerations must be made in regard of interpreting this statement.
I agree that we are all responsible for our sin meaning that we sin because we choose to sin. That is why we are accountable for our sin.
The text did not say that we can conquer the sin without God’s help. It just said that we must rule over our desire. How is it possible to rule over our desire to sin? Then we can discuss whether God is needed or not without making any presumption.
Sin here is not just an objective and neutral thing. As this is part of garden narrative, you know there was another powerful being at play here that is Satan. There are times that sin could refer to Satan. If you read the text a bit more careful, there was a war going on here. What does it mean “Sin is crouching at your door”? This “sin” is more like another person who have the will and desires to have us. I am not saying that this “sin” is definitely Satan, but it is an equation that can’t be overlooked.
Yes, but the fact that none of us made it, but the Lord Jesus revealed how powerful our foe is.
We must differentiate those who actively and consciously reject God with those who have no knowledge of our God because of other reasons such as unreached people groups etc. While God certainly will not force Himself unto us, we are certainly drawn to Him if we are striving to live a good and righteous life. After all, God is about goodness.
Here lies the argument from atheism. The notion that we are born free of religion or any notion of God and that a relationship with God is something that comes later in life and must be embraced. Therefore, atheism is the norm of a human being.
However, if we study the Bible, we read that we were created by this personal divine supreme being to have this relationship with us. So this should be our starting point instead. A relationship with God is where we should start in this world/ universe that is full of wonders revealing who is our divine creator.
I think agnostic woud be the better dscription. Atheism is actually anti-God rather than non commital.History has shown that the need to identify God is almost innate, but the paganistic or pantheon moddels soon die out due to there being no iteraction.This is also why I do not understand cessationism, because God does interact if ou can decipher His mehodology,
5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
I remember in Hebrew class when we got to the Ten “Commandments” that we first noted that in the text they are “words”, not commandments, then examined the grammar and grasped that if they are taken with “I am Yahweh your God” as the first Word then they can be seen not so much as laws/rules as declarations of what God will make true of His people.
That leads to an important distinction: Paul is addressing those who are in Christ and thus have the Holy Spirit, not those “outside”.
Good point. It also ignores the context of the specific situation, i.e. this may be a statement true in that time and place for Cain rather than a universal assertion.
And there are situations where there is no choice that is good!
Of course – that’s what “the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” is all about.
Really? If you have leukemia, does free will mean you can live just fine while rejecting a marrow transplant?
That’s like saying that the captain of a sinking ship can’t tell passengers to get in the lifeboats or else they’ll go down with the ship. You’re making the assumption that the situation we’re in is neutral, whereas the Gospel starts with the supposition that the situation we are in is dire.
Jesus disagreed: “No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him”.
Don’t forget that this was written to Christians.
Huh?
Jesus said “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”, not “Go therefore and make disciples of some from the nations”.
In this connection it is worth noting that this is probably the source behind Paul’s admonition “Be angry but do not sin”.
I generally think of these as admonitions similar to what a car designer might say to a car if it was sentient, i.e. “If you want to work as intended, don’t do these things”.
There seems to be a misunderstanding. My comment was intended to show that the commandments are only meaningful if we have some amount of free will. If we did not have any free will, then any commandments (or admonitions, to use the word selected by @St.Roymond ) telling us to do something that we cannot do would be bullying or teasing.
Like if you were on the way to jail during a dark and rainy day, in handcuffs and guarded by police, and then someone would shout that you need to go to the nearby park, buy ice cream and enjoy of the sunny day.
Except that first they get worked literally to death.
Nice God you worship.
Looking at the original text. Does it use the Greek word for disciple or the word for Teach? It would seriosly affect the interpretation of tHis words.
(I am not a Greek schollar but the NKJV uses the word teach.)
The reason for all this is that Jesus, during His ministry seewmsd to distinguish between a dDisciple and a follower or beleiver. He actually discouraged some from discipleship, probably because He knoew they would not be able to fulfil all the requirements. And this is where I am at. Discipleship is not for everyone. It involves a commitment that not all are prepred to make, but do you think God will reject them completely for this?
Perhaps Paul was simply making the historical observation that when we attempt to make decisions of right and wrong without “consulting God” (if you like), we make the wrong ones.
For me, the without God part, is not listening to the still small voice that asks “what are you doing here Elijah”.
The prophet chose to be overwhelmed by all the hype and fanfare, and when threatened by Jezebel, ran without even asking for Gods guidance. The significant thing is, God was faithful to His servant and comforted Elijah when he finally did stop running.
Thats the beauty of the covenant, we may fail, but God will always uphold his end of the bargan.
I didn’t select it, I ‘stole’ it from someone with a dual PhD (ancient semitic languages, ancient Hebrew), though it also fits with how a rabbi I knew explained what “torah” means.
Good distinction! It brought to mind the day our cross-country coach took us out into the dunes for practice and made us do relay sprints up a steep dune – something we found we were able to do. It seemed like bullying, but it trained us to be able to sprint during a race to pass competitors quickly when needed.
Or with those handcuffs behind your back and an officer said to scratch your nose.
When Jesus said “go and sin no more” He wasn’t telling the individual to do something impossible. I take Him at His word here. And yes, I consider that verse to be as authentic a part of the canon as John 3:16.
I’m guessing the Garden narrative was about the Babylonian exile the time the Bible was compiled. Not some inherited nature that is impossible to deny. The only “sin nature” we have are evolutionary impulses and things we do habitually without even thinking of them. For me the idea of the story you reference is probably be good and God would end the exile. Of course, the author or Job might disagree as would a bunch of other commonsensical notions.
If we were incapable of doing good then we would not have free will and can’t actually sin. Jesus has no need to save me from sin and His death on the Cross was useless.
NKJV: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations”
The Greek μαθητεύσατε πάντα (mah-thay-TEU-sa-te PAHN-ta) would most literally be rendered as “disciple-izing all”.
The progression in the statement is make disciples, baptize, teach, though many have interpreted these as a unity so that being baptized and taught are requirements for being a Christian (i.e. no “Jesus is Lord!” and nothing more); many in the early church took this as indicating that a convert had to be trained morally before Baptism; most have held that this is effectively an equation, thus ‘making disciples’ = baptizing and teaching.
I’m going to make a distinction here based on first-century Jewish thought, of two types of disciples. A disciple of a rabbi was one who was learning from him and aiming to be like him. One category was those who were especially close and were aiming to be like him in both character and thought so as to become rabbis in their turn; the other were those aiming to be like him in character and to understand his thought enough to try to apply it to their lives. All Christians are called to the second, only a few to the first.
A follower was most generally someone something like a follower on a blog, someone who is attracted by the teaching and keeps up with new installments but doesn’t necessarily work hard at understanding or modelling their lives to the teacher’s.
Confusing the issue is that “disciple” and “follower” got used interchangeably at least on occasion; how much that is the case in the Gospels I don’t know off-hand. Most commonly I would say the difference is that a disciple makes conforming his life to that of the teacher a priority while a follower includes it as more of a hobby.
As far as rejecting, in my view God aims to include as many as possible, so that so long as someone is aiming to understand more and to be even a little more Christlike they are at least becoming disciples, so if they have been baptized and are continuing to learn then God isn’t going to toss them out.
Part of doing what is right is having a purpose and following the will of God. When we don’t do that, when we get comfortable or complacent, that’s when sin crouches at our door. We rule over sin by having Jesus reign in our hearts. Jesus sums all the law up in simply saying to love God and love people… turning all the “thou shall nots” into “thou shall”.
We will fail when we try to not do what is wrong, but will succeed when we try to do what is right. When we get to know Jesus, he gives us his will and a purpose. We are motivated by His love. Focus on that and put sin out of your mind… stop worrying about not sinning and don’t let shame and guilt rule over you. That’s how to overcome sin.
No we cant defeat sin without His help. No one is righteous without God.
Another example is Noah who was “righteous in his generations”. In building the Ark and “doing all that the Lord commanded him”, Noah had a purpose, things to do and is then saved from the flood. Presumably, Noah lived the first 500 years of his life without sinning. But what happens next? After God cleanses the land of corruption from sin, it enters right back in! Noah gets comfortable and settles down, plants a vineyard, gets drunk and lay naked in his tent… oh the shame.
This sounds more like what Muslims believe will get them into heaven?
Sanctification - the action of making or declaring something holy.
I’d agree with that except for the last phrase, “it cannot do so”. That’s a pretty flat assertion that – as Martin Luther argued in his Bondage of the Will – it is not possible to not sin, apart from God.
Beyond that things go into the realm of the efficacy of the Word, focusing on the question of whether hearing an instruction from God entails the bestowal of the ability to conform to that instruction. Which ties in to Vinnie’s next post:
We have to ask whether it would have been possible to “go and sin no more” without that instruction having been given.
(It should also be noted that many commentators have taken this to be not a blanket statement about sin but one meaning the specific sin involved.)
That assumes a later date for the composition, which I’m hesitant to go with since some put that date in the time of Hezekiah or even Solomon.
A major theological theme down through the ages is that due to the Fall our wills were “broken” or “bent” and thus can only choose sin, and part of what redemption is about is repairing or straightening our wills. I can’t recall the author, but I remember a tractus arguing that unbelievers have bent wills and can only sin, Christians have partly straightened wills and can choose, the “saints” have almost completely straightened wills and rarely sin, and in glory we will all have wills renewed to be totally unbent and will never choose sin.
I believe that there is a general call (good news about God/Jesus + a call to turn towards God) and there are personal calls. For some reason, the general call seldom turns the mind of a person towards God.
The personal call is a time period when God seems to be drawing the person more than otherwise, in a personally meaningful way. It is typical that the time period has also an end: if the person does not respond to the call, the matters of faith fade away from the mind - the information stays but the internal need to react to the information, chose, disappears.
How often such personal calls happen is something that I do not know. Some say that it would be normally 2-3 times during the life (based on a selective interpretation of a verse in the Bible).
What happens in the life of the persons that never hear the good news about Jesus is something that I don’t know. I assume that God has ways to call also people that have not heard the gospel. For example, dreams seem to be important for Muslims. Many Muslims have seen a very influential dream of a special person dressed in white and that dream experience has made them curious to know who that special person was. When they later hear about Jesus and realize that the person in their dream was Jesus, they accept Jesus as their Lord. This is just one example of the personal ways how God can open the mind of a person to receive salvation through Christ.
You are still talking about righteousness as if it is opposite of sinning. it is not. We can be ostensibly righteous and still make mistakes (sin)
The OP did not talk about righteousness, or salvation or any other Christian notion other than our abulity to choose wheter to sin or not.
Paul had the Jewish notion about God’s influenceing all the time. He was convinced that a person could be a slave to sin an therefor always do its bididng. Sin has no such power or presence.
The Christian dogma about depravity or overpowering sin is false. This has nothing to do with scripture and everything to do with reality. People are not automatically evil and it does not take Christgianity to make them able to resist or not to choose to sin.
IME the majority of people have a good moral compass and try their best to be honest and fair. Many just do not consider God to exist or be relevant yet respect thiose who do. it is a shame that (Probably a minority of) those who call themselves Christian cannot reciprocate that respect.
I’m not following. When Jesus says “feed the poor” I assume people were capable of doing that before and after he said so. Its unnatural to read it otherwise.
Again, I am not following. For me, sin cannot happen unless it’s chosen via free will. If you are forced to do something it is not sin and you have no responsibility for it. For an action to be good or bad a choice needs to be available and freely made. So if this women could choose not to commit this sin, then I assuming that other actions where she may have sinned also involved a choice on her part.
Both of these seem unnatural ways of reading the text in an effort to salvage an ancient doctrine that science has largely overturned and now only exists with a thousand qualifications.
I intentionally said compiled because I think the story itself predates this time period. But its meaning would change many times over the centuries. I doubt original sin or total depravity was on the minds of many ancient Jews during BC times. And I am guessing the original version with Enkidu that the Genesis account played off of ends up having a lot of rearranged furniture that teaches a different theology. Then the account would have meant something different during the exile. It meant something different or additionally to Paul and then came to mean something else in the Church after Augustine used a mistranslated latin version of Romans. This text is polyvalent and the doctrine of original sin has fallen on hard times. I respect the immense Church tradition behind it but I’m going with modern science here. It just renders the garden story myth to me and there are bettie ways to read it today. But I am not going to die on the hill of dating the compilation of the Pentateuch in a form very close to its present to the Exile period.
Was there an actual fall or was it a rising up? We supposedly learned a knowledge of good and evil and had a mind that became more “godly.” The idea of a fall from grace is this idea that God created us in paradise and we expelled ourselves. Now we know this is not true. There was pain in chilbirth, toiling the earth and lots of sickness, death and diseases like cancer for hundreds of millions (and in some cases billions) or year before the fall. I see the garden story as a human response to theodicy, Like Job we really get no answer and when taken literally, I find Genesis is at odds with the findings of modern science.
I think of what you are describing as sanctification. As people draw closer to God I would hope they would sin less. I think this is just a general rule though because I think some people who do not profess Christianity actually may sin less than some people who do. But on the overall, I expect belief in God to produce a positive change in the life of most believers over time. This has nothing to do with sin will, but us overcoming our biological and hereditary instincts and the conditioning we have been predisposed to our whole lives.
Does just “hearing” the Gospel messaged preached count or do you really have to “hear” the Gospel and understand it for it to count? If someone told me Zeus (or some ancient figure that actually lived) died for my sins and I need to believe in him to be saved I would honestly laugh at them. I try to remember that when dealing with non-Christians and people who reject the Gospel (the center of my universe). I think salvation comes from God but it has to be a two way street somehow.
This is the question I think about. What if people, due to lifelong conditioning and a learned way of viewing the world do not intellectually respond to the Christian message? Is this a true rejection of the Gospel and Jesus at the deepest spiritual level or a rejection of a caricature of it? Jesus seemed to imply the opposite was true at least. Many will do mighty works in His name, including miracles and He will say before the Father, I never knew you. I think the opposite can be true and can’t see a good reason to think otherwise. Some who never knew Jesus by Christian terminology may know Him in other terms and religious language and be living far more faithfully to Him than professing Christians. So some people professing the Gospel don’t really know Jesus. I suspect some people who do not profess the Gospel message do know Jesus.
I tend to agree. But let us follow the thinking through to the next step. What did Jesus’s death on the Cross do? I suspect some thinkers/people work backwards from Paul and Cross to accepting Jesus repaired a broken world that can conveniently be seen in the Garden narrative. We really can’t expect to take this belief system away without providing an alternative that explains what Jesus did on the Cross.
I believe people could choose good or evil just as I believe they could have repented and been forgiven before the Cross and after without it occurring. So I think this ties into another issue that some on this forum deem “blood magic.” We also have to deal with the versus about creation groaning, etc. In one sense it seems silly (how do rocks and atoms groan?) but on another level its Scripture and most Christians still seem to attempt to take Scripture seriously. There is a fine line here.